All right, I've officially done it: I've taken my mission to the streets. And by "the streets," I mean real life.
A friend and I have been gradually falling into a rhythm of accountability partnership for a few months now. When I first got securely back on the wagon post-migraine, I announced to her on the following Monday morning that I was in an iron-clad agreement with myself to go to the gym that night. She said she was planning on going to her gym that night, too. We agreed to check in with each other later that evening about whether we had both met our obligations. I told her when she asked me if I went, that if I said no, I wanted her to immediately follow up with, "Why the fuck not?" Anything less than "because my legs fell off" would be an unacceptable excuse. Fortunately - perhaps even consequently - when she did check in with me that evening, my answer was yes.
At the end of last week, we were talking about wanting to do a friendly steps challenge, but we have two different fitness trackers: I have Jiminy (commonly known as a VivoFit), and she has a Fitbit. The idea seemed like a non-starter until we realized, hey, there's an app for everything - there's surely an app for competition between incompatible brands of fitness trackers. Sure enough, I found an app/website called Stridekick, which we both immediately joined and created a private challenge on. That challenge starts today.
While I do have a competitive streak that tends to become pretty fierce sometimes, the real driving force in this for me isn't the pride points I'll score when I mercilessly kick my friend's ass; it's from knowing the accountability is going to be instantaneous and displayed in hard numbers. Jiminy will immediately betray me if my numbers aren't up to scratch, so I've gotta earn those steps. You can do challenges other than total steps on Sidetrack, and also against as many people as you want instead of just 1:1, but this seemed the best place to start. My friend and I have similar schedules, so it's a fair fight in terms of possible time investment. There's a bit of competition in DietBet, of course, with monetary stakes, but I like the personal element the head-to-head competition adds. Plus, this brings positive reinforcement to my potential to succeed in my DietBets, and in my overall mission in the long term. It seems a worthwhile experiment, at least.
Both my Stridekick challenge and my DietBets end with this month, so a lot will be revealed on February 28th. No time to lose, so if you'll excuse me, I'd better... uh... get to steppin'.